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Award 2016

2016 Playable City Award goes to Hirsch and Mann

The winner of the 2016 international Playable City Award was London based design and technology consultancyHirsch & Mann, who pitched to transform everyday pedestrian crossings into playful multi-sensory experiences.

In September 2016, Watershed unveiled the shortlist of 8 projects out of 81 applications from 34 countries for the fourth international Playable City Award, inviting artists, designers, architects, technologists and creative practitioners from all over the world to propose new and distinctive ideas to respond to the theme Journeys.

Hirsch & Mann’s Stop Smile Stroll is a playful intervention at pedestrian crossings that brings strangers together for a serendipitous shared moment – interrupting the tedium of our everyday mundane ‘stop and walk’ routine. The judges were particularly excited about their emphasis on co-creating pedestrian crossing experiences with local communities – which may range from a 30 second party to a moment of quiet reflection, as well as incorporating city data.

As winners of the 2016 Award they received £30,000 and worked with the Watershed team to develop and test their ideas in Bristol, before touring to other Playable City cities globally.

Stop Smile stroll will be live in Bristol on 17 and 18 March as part of the 5G Layered Realities Festival.

The 2016 Playable City Award is produced by Watershed and supported by:

Shortlist

Award Judges

Phil is Head of Oracle’s Cloud development team in Bristol UK, building cloud lifecycle infrastructure and functionality that manages the development and delivery of Oracle’s IaaS and PaaS products and technologies.

Clare joined Watershed in 2004 and as Creative Director leads the Pervasive Media Studio, Playable City, engagement and cinema teams, working with industry, academic and creative partners from around the world to support talent and champion new ideas.

Shortlist

Shortlist

Shark in the Puddle is a collection of freely-distributed interventions in the city. Ludic Rooms, the creators, will collaborate with the people of Bristol to create an arsenal of open ‘disposable’ artworks that gradually inhabit the city, changing daily based upon the ecosystem: sun, rain, wind, day, night.

Shortlist

Transportals will transform a series of locations across Bristol into pockets of interactive audio-visual art that will invite Bristolians to re-experience their daily environment as one of joy and play.

Award 2013

Winner

Shortlist

CAST is an ambitious, site-specific, city-centre pavilion, where the form of the structure’s cladding is created from 3D scans of items provided by the public, each of which will represent their own personal relationship with the city.

Shortlist

Robot runners is a game that you play in the real world while your robot clone traces out your path nearby. It combines electronics, geo-location technology and human interaction to create a truly original fun and engaging game.

Shortlist

Shortlist

Tumbling out of the back of a re-appropriated tip-up truck will come huge building blocks, all colours and shapes. An open invitation to play, build your dream city, knock it down, and then build it again.